1. Field
The present invention generally relates to portable devices. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for organizing and consolidating portable device functionality.
2. Related Art
Portable devices, such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable computers, and portable media players, have become increasingly versatile over the years. For example, a single portable device may function as a mobile phone, a web browser, a portable media player, an email client, a document editor, and a global positioning system (GPS) receiver. Similarly, portable computers such as tablet personal computers (PCs) may incorporate the functionality of a full operating system and one or more application suites. Hence, modern portable generally provide a variety of applications and store large amounts of documents, media, and/or other files in various formats.
To accommodate the increased versatility of a modern portable device, the various applications, menu items, files, and/or other software components which reside in the portable device are typically organized in a complex menu and/or directory hierarchy. A user of the portable device may have difficulty navigating through the hierarchy to find previously accessed files and/or applications and use the many functions provided by the portable device. In addition, the portable device may lack utilities to combine and/or link files, settings, and usage contexts from multiple applications. Consequently, the user may be unable to utilize the portable device efficiently without an intuitive mechanism for finding, retrieving, and associating user settings, features, and files on the portable device.